Power and Energy Commons^™

Dc-Dc Buck Boost Converter Using The Lt8390 Controller And Gan High Electron Mobility Transistors, Juan Manuel Urbano Jr, Brian Thongchai Keokot

Electrical Engineering

California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo’s ongoing Energy Harvesting from Exercise Machines (EHFEM) project creates a sustainable energy source by converting physical exercise from exercise machines into renewable electricity. Implementing energy harvesting technology into the Recreation Center’s exercise machines helps Cal Poly make progress on its goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 [1]. An improvement to the system with new technology increases Cal Poly Recreation Center’s ability to save money and improve sustainability.

The focus of this project improves the design of Nicholas Serres, who used the LT8390 controller in his buck boost DC-DC converter [2]. This project improves …

Wildfire Early Detection System (Weds), Mason Mciver, Vincent Liang, Jeanreno Racines

Electrical Engineering

With climate change causing an increase in temperature over the past several decades, wildfires have been burning hotter and moving quicker leaving a trail of destruction in their path. Detecting a wildfire early allows firefighters to respond efficiently and effectively to ensure containment. With the rise of advanced computer vision and algorithms, autonomous systems can be used to monitor and report any fire activity. Having multiple devices spread out across a large area will allow first responders to map out the fire location and track the fire. By utilizing smart technologies, property damage can be minimized and residents living in …

Miniaturized Ultraviolet Imager High Voltage Power Supply, Nicholas Palmer, Jason Thomas Heil

Electrical Engineering

Sending satellites into orbit becomes exponentially more expensive with weight and size, so designing high-voltage DC-DC converters that can achieve kilovolt level outputs in a small form factor is crucial to reducing costs. The Miniaturized Ultraviolet Imager (MUVI) aims to monitor Earth’s ionosphere and report weather patterns to climate scientists within a 2U cube satellite footprint. The imaging equipment consists of a microchannel plate and phosphor screen that require 2.5kV and 5.5kV respectively at microamp level currents. This report explains the implementation of a high voltage boost cascaded flyback converter to meet all of the MUVI satellite output voltage requirements. …

Solar Soiling Mitigation, Claire Desmith

Electrical Engineering

This senior project aims to mitigate performance losses that occur in Photovoltaic (PV) systems due to soiling of the panels. Soiling is the natural occurrence of debris accumulation on panels, depending on local climate conditions. Soiling loss refers to efficiency lost due to dirt and dust accumulation on the panels. The debris reduces system output by shading on a smaller scale. In addition to uniform soiling, corner soiling is observed in framed modules as debris collects in the corners of the modules. While solutions currently exist to clean modules to mitigate soiling losses, these solutions are often expensive and time …

Dc-Dc Buck-Boost Converter Design For Energy Harvesting From Exercise Equipment, Nicholas Serres

Electrical Engineering

This project aims to improve energy harvesting efficiency from an exercise machine. Exercise machine energy harvesting has a small immediate impact but can eventually have an immense impact. An elliptical exercise machine energy converter outputs 5V-60V whereas the microinverters require approximately 36V. The buck boost DC-DC converter bridges the gap between the microinverter and the elliptical machine. Increasing the buck-boost controller efficiency increases power production. Greater power efficiency gives the whole system more financial viability, and additionally makes it a greater sustainable energy source.

Dc House Network Design And Modeling, Timmy Huu Nguyen, Joseph Shafie

Electrical Engineering

Although electricity is a necessity for nearly everything in daily life, many developing countries are unable to provide easy access to this utility. Often times within these developing countries, many renewable energy sources exist that are readily accessible to these same people that don’t have access to electricity within their homes, such as solar energy. However, the nature of renewable energy is that most renewable energy lacks consistency in power delivery throughout the day. An example of this is that solar energy isn’t available during the night. These small communities are often comprised of people that are familiar with each …

Smart Solar Charge Controller, Aria Pegah, Miclaine Emtman

Electrical Engineering

The technology of photovoltaics has been quickly evolving as we move toward a future with more clean energy. Energy conversion efficiency is key to making these systems the viable option amongst other sources of power. This project proposes a way to increase the power yield from a solar system by implementing smarter algorithms in the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) component of the system. MPPT is critical because environmental conditions may vary significantly for any given system due to irradiance and shading. The proposed method for MPPT utilizes a controller that uses swarm intelligence to do the power tracking.. This …

Rf Power Amplifier, Angel De Jesus Delgado, Rachanon Wajanakunakorn, Andrew John Ferguson

Electrical Engineering

Wireless devices are part of everyday life, cellphones and radio receivers impact more people than any piece of technology. Thus, the respective building blocks continue to advance and achieve better performance. A primary component of all wireless communication systems is the power amplifier that drives the antenna. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) holds the International Microwave Symposium (IMS) every year where teams compete internationally for the most efficient RF Power Amplifier (PA). Power amplifier technologies strive to maximize efficiency and linearity. Topologies to consider are D, E, F, F-1 and Doherty since they have a maximum theoretical …

Distribution Line Multi-Tool, Michael Andrew Garcia, Drew Miller, Sukhdeep Singh, Ritwik Kesavath

Electrical Engineering

Power companies are always interested in the best possible monitoring equipment for their grid. The power line multi-tool developed would aid in the monitoring of the power system’s distribution network. This device assesses the current conditions of distribution power lines. The device is able to measure current, detect downed power lines, as well as recognize fire starting conditions, and have wireless communication for ease of access and installation. Overall this device greatly aids in helping utilities monitor their grid in more detail.

With the increase of dry climates yearly, several utility companies are taking measures to aid in the prevention …

Wind/Hydro Power Generation Simulator, Justin Shaun Otus, Nicholas Joseph Steele, Patrick Daniel Murphy

Electrical Engineering

This project aims to design a wind or hydro power generation simulator. The original scope of this project was to construct a physical simulation apparatus in which wind/water speed data is fed to a microcontroller that adjusts the control voltage of a motor drive. The spinning DC motor would generate power via a coupled generator whose power output would be a scaled down version of wind/hydroelectric generator power output given the same wind/water speed input. Due to Covid-19, the project was altered to be entirely virtual and was made through Simulink in MATLAB. The virtual simulator attempts to mimic physical …

Single Axis Solar Panel Tracking Mount Using Stepper Motor And Accelerometer Positional Control, Ezra Pramono

Electrical Engineering

Optimal solar panel systems rotate to track the sun, as solar panels operate at their maximum potential when the panel plane is completely normal to the sun’s rays. These tracking systems often using two axes of movement. This project is to design a system that will allow a solar panel to track the sun using only one rotational axis, which saves energy and uses fewer parts. The system tracks the entire range of the sun's motion and has positional feedback to allow control of the solar panel's angle. The position of the tracking system is controllable via an external computer. …

Conducted And Radiated Emi Measurements Of Parallel Buck Converters Under Varying Spread Spectrum Parameters, Elena Postupalskaya, Nathan Wang

Electrical Engineering

The Conducted and Radiated EMI Measurements with Parallel Buck Converters Under Varying Spread Spectrum Parameters research senior project aims to explore the effects from Spread Spectrum Frequency Modulation (SSFM) on the input electromagnetic interference (EMI) or noise of a switching power supply, specifically with LM53601MAEVM hardware. The input EMI is important as the main input bus needs to be clean to provide a reliable source for other sensitive devices connected to it. SSFM can replace a conventional EMI filter and save weight, space, and cost. This project provides a basis in terms of the impacts of variable SSFM in simulation …

Pulsed Electric Field System Development For Algae Biofuel Extraction, Juan David Gonzalez Aguayo, Aspyn Bessler

Electrical Engineering

The search for sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels proves necessary due to the effects fossil fuels have on Earth’s environment. These alternatives must have a minimum ecological footprint and cause no long-term harm to the environment. An environmentally friendly fuel is necessary to usher in a generation of renewable green energy.

The production of algae refined biofuels becomes a possible solution to this growing issue. Algae absorb CO2from the atmosphere during their reproduction and growth cycles, yielding a positive environmental impact. As the biofuel is refined and becomes suitable for use, the combustion of the finished fuel generates an equal …

Energy And Economic Losses Due To Soiling On Utility Scale Pv Systems To Guide Timing Of Cost Effective Cleaning, Sophia Mcmillin Stockburger, Vicente Jesus Rios

Electrical Engineering

The purpose of this senior project is to develop and recommend a cleaning schedule for Goldtree Solar Farm that is both economically beneficial and an efficient use of cleaning for the client. Solar farms can have various factors that influence the cleaning schedule such as weather behavior, time of the year, soiling, and other factors. Through this senior project, the goal is to assess these factors effect on the solar farm to produce a cleaning schedule that will maximize energy production, maximize profits, and prevent insignificant cleaning

This analysis is motivated by defining and promoting the benefits of regular maintenance …

Design And Development Of Laboratory Single-Axis Pv Module Tracker, Helen A. Rice, Delaney Berger, Avishek Maitra

Electrical Engineering

Solar energy is an integral part of the renewable energy industry. Advanced solar farms actively track solar movement and update solar panel angles to maximize the system’s output power. Cal Poly boasts its own Solar Farm that features a single-axis tracking system. Single-axis tracking aims to get panels as close to perpendicular as possible given the panel arrangements and given the time of year. Single-axis tracking is a more robust measurement and tracking option. Single-axis tracking systems usually only have East-West panel arc movement, following the sun’s rotation. Dual-axis trackers have both East-West and North-South panel arc movements. Dual-axis systems …

Efficiency Optimization Of Miso Converter, Gabriel Leonides, Christopher S. Peters, Lauren N. Rotsios

Electrical Engineering

In recent years, there has been a rapidly growing need for sustainable energy sources. This need comes from the increasing threat of climate change, significant population growth, as well as the effort to bring electricity to rural and underdeveloped areas across the world. The DC House project at Cal Poly aims to address these issues. The Multiple Input Single Output (MISO) converter is an integral part of the DC House project. The MISO converter is a system that connects multiple power sources to a DC bus. This allows the DC House to be powered by multiple types of renewable energy …

Electric Motorcycle Lithium-Ion Battery System, Amman Fasil Asfaw, Donald J. Alexander

Electrical Engineering

This project entails the processes of design, construction, implementation, and testing of a lithium-ion battery system, including a battery management system, dedicated to converting a 1999 Honda XR100R motorcycle into a fully functional electric motorcycle. The battery system powers the motorcycle with enough voltage and amperage to sustain the needed power capability for a reasonable range. Providing an estimate of the voltage needed, the two largest loads, the DC motor and controller, draw about 48 to 60 volts from the battery for proper operation. Additionally, different aspects of the design also ensure safe operation, correct sizing, and maximum lifetime of …

Cascaded Voltage Clamping And Ldo Offline Power Supply, Elizabeth Davis, Timothy Jeong

Electrical Engineering

Offline power supplies are necessary for any sort of electronic device that utilizes wall power. For offline power supplies, it is a common practice to use the switching mode method where the high voltage AC input is first rectified and then switched at high frequency to a much lower voltage. This method has been known to be very efficient. Also, it’s more efficient than a linear supply method where the AC input is stepped down and then linearly regulated down to a low voltage. Despite the efficiency benefit, the switching method employs a high frequency transformer and inductor. This will …

Bi-Directional Dc-Dc Converter, John W. Hamlin, Oscar Ambriz, Luis Onofre

Electrical Engineering

This project was developed with the purpose of creating an efficient energy management system for the DC House project, with a centralized 12V battery system fed by a 48V Multiple Input Single Output Source (MISO). The energy management system will consist of a bidirectional DC-DC converter. During the day when the renewable sources produce enough energy to fulfill the load’s energy demand, the converter will make use of the excess energy by taking a 48V DC input and stepping it down to a 12V DC output in order to charge a 12V 100 Ah battery. When renewable sources can no …

Lawn Buddy, Jayson Johnston, Andrew Brown, Jacob Maljian

Electrical Engineering

Grass lawns are a common hallmark of the American home. In 2019, a survey from the National Association of Landscape Professionals found that 81% of all Americans owned a lawn [1]. Mowing is a time consuming and costly chore that is part of maintaining a grass lawn. The manual labor in mowing a lawn can exceed 40 hours per year [2]. People commonly incur weekly costs on mowing services to save time. Traditional gas powered mowers are physically demanding and use engines that need routine maintenance. They operate loudly enough that users should be wearing hearing protection and the noise …

Electricity Price Prediction With Computational Intelligence, Toan Hoang

Electrical Engineering

Electricity price depends on numerous factors including the weather, location, time of year/month/day (summer, holidays, day/night, etc.), consumption, and market changes or disruptions. The power loss in the transmission lines and the use of electricity also affect the load's price. Forecasting about the electricity price provides future trends and patterns consumption of the users. Forecasting electricity price is crucially important for producers and consumers in the energy trading markets. It is a complicated task because of the uncertainty behaviors and demand fluctuation. The maximization of profit for participants is highly associated with the bidding strategies. Multiple forecasting electricity price tools …

Energy And Economic Losses Due To Soiling On Utility Scale Pv Systems To Guide Timing Of Cost Effective Cleaning, Jackson P. Puckett, Maximilian M. Sosa, Brandon F. Grossman

Electrical Engineering

The energy and associated economic losses due to soiling on both residential and utility scale PV (photovoltaic) systems can be both significant and avoidable. Losses from 1.2% up to 6% have been reported, which is of interest to system operators [1]. Modules may be cleaned to reduce losses, but this comes with an offsetting economic cost. A quantification of energy losses, and the corresponding economic loss, will allow a determination of a closer to optimal cleaning schedule depending on the level of soiling and corresponding energy loss. Two methods are proposed and compared. Method 1 uses an ARES Soiling Measurement …

Dual Axis Solar Panel Tracker, Xavier Joseph Lugue, Javier Harrison, Nicholas Ryan Wolfe

Electrical Engineering

Photovoltaic systems generate more energy when orthogonally facing the sun where solar cells absorb the most light. By creating an effective, autonomous solar tracking system, the developed solar panels consistently generate maximum energy while using less power. Dual axis solar trackers surpass single axis trackers in energy generation, however, their cost and reliability provide a significant drawback. This project develops different algorithmic implementations designed to provide optimal and efficient behavior for photovoltaic systems. These algorithms adjust the solar panel’s position appropriately with the sun’s location, weather conditions, and selected operating modes. The solar tracking system’s operations include latitudinal axis capability …

Pv Mppt Water Pump Controller, Jacob R. Lamkin

Electrical Engineering

The intention of this project is to create a low cost way to extract the maximum useful power from a PV module to power a water pump. This approach will yield maximum financial and technical accessibility for end users. The project was successful in powering a water pump from a PV module as desired, and the microcontroller driven control circuitry was capable of finding and maintaining operation at the maximum power point of the PV module. Due to the low performance of the buck converter used in this project, this approach was not as efficient as desired and would require …

Apollo Photovoltaic Overview And Assessment, Andrew S. Hollis, James P. Tran, Andes Le, Regita Soetandar

Electrical Engineering

This senior project aims to take the various data sheets provided to us by PIVVIR Solar, the organization in charge of Apollo photovoltaic power plant, and perform an overall assessment as well as condensing the information into a more digestible and concise document. Currently, the documents provided to us by PIVVIR Solar are scattered and disorganized. Our goal is to take what we understand about photovoltaic power plants and combine it with the Apollo plant’s datasheets and summarize everything into one focused document that more readers can understand.

Dc-Dc Buck-Boost Converter For Energy Harvesting From Exercise Equipment, David T. Bolla

Electrical Engineering

This senior project helps harvest the excess energy that exercise equipment generates. Sustainable energy acts as the main target for this project, and it attempts this through reusing the energy created when exercising on elliptical machines. An elliptical machine outputs voltages between approximately 5V and 60V, and a micro-inverter requires an input voltage of about 36V. This DC-DC converter takes the variable output voltage of an elliptical machine and brings it to approximately 36V. Re-purposing the excess energy an elliptical user creates for the grid provides a sustainable alternative to dissipating the energy as heat. This project, along with other …

Cal Poly Ee 518 Electric Power Protection Laboratory, Richard Terre, Vincent Tham, Austin Kurth

Electrical Engineering

Facing a rapidly-changing power industry, the electrical engineering department at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo proposed Advanced Power Systems Initiatives to better prepare its students for entering the power industry. These initiatives call for the creation of a new laboratory curriculum that utilizes microprocessor-based relays to reinforce the fundamental concepts of power system protection.

The electric power protection laboratory (EPPL) senior project is the validation of lab manuals written for the planned EE-518 power system protections laboratory looking to be offered in Spring 2020 alongside the current lecture class under the same designation. This report evaluates the lab manual, verifies …

Spread Spectrum Buck Converter, Summer Elise Rutherford, Kyle Brandon Halloran, Brian Taylor Arbiv

Electrical Engineering

Electromagnetic interference (EMI) is an issue prevalent to DC-DC converters. When a system doesn’t effectively filter out external noise or signals, these signals can cause disturbances to the system at large. The switching technology of DC-DC converters (PWM in particular), lends the system susceptible to EMI because there is a prevalent peaks at the switching frequency, meaning any external signals will not be effectively attenuated at this frequency. This can cause significant issues at the input bus of the DC-DC converters because this bus is likely the input of a multitude of devices; the EMI susceptibility caused by switching technology …

Pv Hybrid Inverter And Bess, Jacob Sussex, William Dresser, Owen Mckenzie, Jonathan Wharton, Derek Seaman

Electrical Engineering

The storage of energy from renewable sources such as photovoltaic based systems is a growing market, with 36 MWh of storage installed in Q1 of 2018. A report from EnergySage earlier this year states that in 2017, 74% of residential solar owners were also interested in energy storage systems. Mainstream systems like Tesla’s Powerwall are competing with other lithium-ion based storage systems from a wide number of providers on the market today. Short term and long term data collection on a system like this could be useful in designing future systems which perform better than the current market offerings. This …

Cp Ewheel, Garrett Maxon, Adam Berg, Logan Griffith, Jacob Butler, Alexander Evans

Electrical Engineering

With an increasing demand for environmentally friendly transportation options, the bike market is larger than ever. According to bikeleague.org, from 2005 to 2013, the number of commuters using bikes has grown by 62%, and continues to rise. Regardless, commute time remains a barrier for many prospective users. Traditional bikes are useful in scenarios where the user only needs to travel a short distance. Electric bikes allow individuals to travel to farther destinations quicker, and with less effort. However, most electric bikes are rather expensive, typically ranging in price from one thousand to ten thousand dollars. Additionally, because the bike, motor, …